Indiana Preservationist 1980

              Historic
Landmarks
Foundation
of Indiana
the Indiana
Preservationist
3402 Boulevard Place, Indianapolis, IN 46208
In late December, Secretary of the
Interior Cecil D. Andrus announced
that he had awarded $52.2 million in
historic preservation grants-in-aid to
the fifty states, District of Columbia,
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, U.S.
territories, the Trust Territory of
the Pacific Islands, and the National
Trust for Historic Preservation.
The funds are the annual
allocation of the Historic Preservation
Fund appropriated by Congress and
administered by Interior's Heritage
Conservation and Recreation Service.
The fund total for fiscal year 1980
was $55 million.
On January 16th, Joseph D. Cloud,
director of the Indiana Department of
Natural Resources and the state's
historic preservation officer, announced
Indiana's awards of its federal
allocation.(see list of grantees on
page five).  Then, on April 1st,
President Carter announced a stunning
$16.5 million reduction in the $55
million 1980 appropriation as part of
his plan to restrict federa1
expenditures.
The cancelled appropriation—-or
recision as the bureaucrats are calling
it—came as a shock to the Hoosiers
who had received the acquisition and
development grants awarded by the-^stat^
All such projects not under contract
by April 1st are currently in limbo.
Saved by "a simple
change of location"
James Bogardus, the American
who constructed the first iron-fronted
building in 1848, envisioned situations
such as the one recently faced by the
Wilking Building (right)   in
Indianapolis. In his treatise on the
advantages of cast-iron construction,
he wrote that "it also follows that,
a building once erected, it may be
taken to pieces with the same
facility and despatch, without
injuring or destroying any of its
parts, and then re-erected elsewhere
with the same perfection as at first
....This quality is of the greatest
importance; for it renders every
cast-iron building not only a present',
but a permanent addition to our
national wealth....The progress of
continued on page 13
Soring 1980
Federal freeze
puts projects
on hold
After being deluged by letters and
testimony from preservationists across
the country, the House Interior
Appropriations subcommittee recently
voted not to uphold President Carter' s
request without further study.  The
subcommittee approved releasing $6.5
million of the frozens funds back to
the Department of the Interior. The
other $10 million is being held
pending the outcome of the study.
Give it back!
In addition to the drastic cut
proposed in this year's historic
preservation funding ,the Administration' s
recommendations for reducing the 1981
budget include slashing the Historic
Preservation Fund from $45 million to
$25 million.
According to James Biddle, who
retired in June after twelve years
as president of the National Trust,
"such budget decisions should be fair
and should take into account the
country's needs and the return on
investment of our tax dollars. Historic
preservation does give the American
people a sense of time, place and
meaning about where they live.  But it
is also an increasingly recognized
solution  to the perplexing problems of
inflation, unemployment, poor housing
and economically depressed cities and
towns. We now have the facts to
trumpet the economic benefits  of
preservation efforts in the market
place and, of course, conservation of
the great energy investment in our
built environment.1'*
The National Trust and HLFI urge
you to write your congressmen about
maintaining fair preservation funding
levels in Indiana and in the country
at large. As the National Trust
pointed out in the June issue of
continued on page 5